Dental cleaning devices such as electric toothbrushes or electric oral irrigators customarily have a grip or a handle section or handhold to which a variety of cleaning tools such as brush attachments, jet nozzles, interproximal brushes are attachable, thus enabling several users to use the dental cleaning device with their own, in particular person-related cleaning tools. Such electric toothbrushes are known, for example, from DE 19627752 A1 or EP 0624079 B1.
From DE 299 15 858 U1 a dental cleaning device is known in which each of the different toothbrushes can be inserted only into its assigned receptacle in a console. This then starts the program provided for this particular toothbrush. Particularly children find it however difficult to locate the individual opening for insertion of their personal toothbrush and to mate the plug there. Furthermore, this console involves high complexity of manufacture, considering that it requires the provision of a plurality of different receptacles and each of the toothbrushes has a different plug assigned to its own receptacle.
In a further device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,959, each hand toothbrush is assigned its own accommodating slot in a housing, so that each toothbrush can be assigned an individual brushing time signal via the housing. This arrangement is very elaborate from the manufacturing point of view without providing for the detection and storage of user-specific data of the tooth cleaning operation.
Such dental cleaning devices are capable of improvement on many counts. One problem is in particular that in storage-battery-operated toothbrushes the storage battery may become depleted prematurely. This may happen, for example, in cases where the toothbrush is not properly stowed away in a travel bag or the like, so that the drive mechanism turns on accidentally. Furthermore, it may happen that the handle section is not always coupled with the correct brush attachments, so that as a result of the lack of compatibility the handle section, for example, the coupling sections, may be damaged particularly in the area of the drive train, or a proper cleaning function is not assured, likewise for lack of compatibility.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved handle section of an electric dental cleaning device and improved cleaning tools therefor, which avoid the disadvantages of the prior art, develop it further and afford additional advantages. In particular the invention aims to provide a comfortable safety device preventing accidental activation and/or improper use of the dental cleaning device.